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Wednesday, May 15, 2013

I'm a busy busy teacher. Along with finishing the next few drafts of my book, He's the Weird Teacher, excerpts from which I appreciate all of you reading here, I am also editing a collection of essays covering a wide variety of topics and writing styles about teaching and education in Hawaii, including first person stories from teachers about working in their classrooms. We, myself and the publishing group Interstitial Press, have begun circulating the CFP (Call For Papers) I have included below. Essay inclusion will be merit-based, so writers with no previous publishing experience need not worry about being overlooked.
We are already in talks with local booksellers about Hawaii distribution and nationwide and international distribution has already been assured.
The title is a parody of the Regan-era study "A Nation At Risk" which jump-started much of the education reform movement in America.

Below is the CFP. Thank you for reading and I look forward to your submissions.

***ALOHA AT RISK: EDUCATION IN HAWAII CFP

Since the release of “A Nation At Risk” in 1983, public education has
been subjected to increased scrutiny from political officials, parents,
and concerned citizens. In recent years, such scrutiny has given way to
calls for comprehensive education reform. Both the federal No Child Left
Behind Act of 2001 and Race to the Top program, respectively
inaugurated under Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama, focus on
increasing standards for public schools throughout the United States,
while more local initiatives like private school voucher systems and
parent “trigger” laws attempt to increase learning opportunities for
children by maximizing parental choice and administrative participation.

Yet, these reforms—or 'deforms' as they're called by opponents—have
been condemned for being undemocratic, corporatist, and overly punitive.
NCLB, for example, has been said to subsume diverse groups of children
under reductionist statistical metrics, failing to account for
demographic and developmental variances. RTTT continued this trend,
according to critics, and added pressure for local school districts to
implement costly teacher evaluation protocols based largely on
standardized achievement tests, rather than holistic measures of
learning growth and professional practice. In an ironic display of
political harmony, small-government 'conservatives' and labor-minded
'liberals' alike have attacked national education reforms, the former
for impugning states' rights and the latter for undermining collective
bargaining.

Hawaii, considered by some political pundits to be
the most labor-friendly state in the nation, has been on the frontlines
of the battle over public education. One year after receiving an RTTT
grant award in 2010, the state was placed on “high risk” status by the
U.S. Department of Education for failing to implement reforms quickly
enough and prolonging a regressive contract dispute with the Hawaii
State Teachers Association. Education reforms are further complicated by
events from Hawaii's historical trajectory, including settler
colonialism, imperial overthrow of native governance, suppression of
indigenous culture, and plantation economics, each of which inform the
state's current sociopolitical structure and discursive condition.

This interdisciplinary essay collection seeks to engage the theme of
“education in Hawaii” from a critical vantage point. Submissions will be
accepted for each of the book's four sections: “Pedagogy of Aloha”
(critical pedagogical studies); “Decolonizing Aloha” (colonialism in/and
the classroom); “Re/Deforming Aloha” (general education theory,
including social, political, and philosophical analysis); and “Teaching
Aloha” (classroom stories). Potential topics might include:

- How do socioeconomic and ethnic inequality affect Hawaii's classrooms and education politics?

- To what extent does money drive education reform in Hawaii? Do
reforms (re)produce corporate infrastructure and economic division,
rather than quality learning experiences?

- How does Hawaii's
history, including settler colonialism and plantation development,
impact the present state and future direction of the state's education
system?

- In what ways are native or marginalized knowledge(s)
suppressed by standards-based education reforms? What pedagogical
techniques might be used to advance such knowledge(s)?

Essays should be approximately
4,000 to 8,000 words in length and employ Chicago Manual of Style
formatting (using endnotes). Submissions should be sent to
editors@interstitialjournal.com. Initial inquiries are welcome. Deadline
for submissions is December 31, 2013.

Monday, May 13, 2013

The
thing that made the transition easiest was when I finally internalized
the idea that Everyone Is Faking It. No one really knows what is going
on. As a child you never suspect that the grown-ups in your life don’t
have everything wired. They must, they’re grown-ups. I think the trouble
with the puberty part of adolescence is you spend a lot of your time
assuming that at some point you’re going to figure everything out.
Things are going to become clear. You will hit a certain age and a key
will turn in your brain and suddenly life will make sense. I thought
maybe when I graduate high school. Maybe when I graduate college. Maybe
when I get my first real job. Never happened. Never got the cheat code
that illuminated Life and showed me the back doors and the ropes. Never
got to peek behind the curtain. Never got the software update.

The
only explanation is not that I didn’t get it. It’s that no one gets it.
I’m not a solipsist. All you other people exist. You’re walking bags of
meat, water, and electricity just like I am. If I didn’t get an
instruction manual, if I never got the download of Important
Information, then no one did. Everyone is faking it.

...

Those
two thoughts sprung a trap in my Teacher Brain than can never be
unsprung. Everyone is faking it and there are no rules. This changed
everything. I had that realization at around the same time I was really
getting good at the basic mechanics of teaching- Various types of
classroom discipline, how different instructional theories played in the
classroom, what worked for me and what didn’t. I was ready to start
making my own choices right at the moment I was freed by my twin
realizations. No one knows what they are doing and there are no rules.

Monday, May 6, 2013

Oh!
That’s a scary thing, isn’t it? What if they ask you a question you
don’t know the answer to? New teachers have this same fear. I’m supposed
to be the smartest one in the room. I’m the Teacher. I’m the Parent.
I’m the Adult. I should have all the answers.

No.
No you shouldn’t. Be wrong. Be unsure. That tells your child that being
wrong is ok. I tell my students weekly that I want them to get things
wrong. My job is to teach them, but if they know everything I have
nothing to teach them. Them being wrong keeps me employed. I will never
ever yell at someone for being wrong. I’ll get on their case for not
trying, that’s a huge problem, but being wrong? Nope. Be wrong. Humans
are wrong with startling regularity. You can’t learn unless you’re wrong
first. I tell my kids I’m wrong all the time. When I make a mistake in
class they point it out. Oh, there is nothing more fun than pointing out
your teacher’s mistake. “Mr. Robertson! The answer is 52! You wrote
55!” “Why so I did. Thank you.” “Mr. Robertson, you misspelled ceiling!
Again.” Ceiling, for those of you who don’t know, is one of the most
frustrating words in the English language. It never looks right. Being
wrong is learning.

The best part of telling your child that you don’t know is it means you get to learn something together!
We now live in a world where all the knowledge is quite literally at
our fingertips. The Google Knows All. Take advantage of your smart
phone. Show your child how you find out something when you don’t know.
They learn from you. If you’re brave enough to be wrong, your son will
come to my class and he’ll be brave enough to be wrong.